Early The First Morning

We are really here. It is early morning, the clouds are sort of scattering and the city is waking up, like every city in the world wakes up. Cars hissing along wet streets, trucks banging and wheezing. I peak out our window, pulling the curtain aside only a little so as not to let in too much light because K***** is still sleeping. Across the street from our Hotel, I can see into the cupola room of an apartment…a Dutch apartment in Amsterdam! I am excited and scared and eager to get out and see everything.

But there is time.

Yesterday was a long blur of planes, airports and then a long taxi ride through the Amsterdam rush hour talking with our Pakistani driver, Pas. His English difficult to understand, we talked of Pakistani’s problems in policing the borders with Afghanistan and how he has a friend in San Francisco. He then spoke proudly of his daughter, the doctor who will be moving to England to practice gynecology, and his son the MBA. He had one other daughter who was 12 and he shared as how it is expensive to send your children to college. When we arrived at the hotel I paid him with a 50 Euro bill and told him to give me back 5, he said “No, that is too much” and handed me back 7. I thanked him.

We travelled for 16 hours all told, and slept almost as much. I am not certain of the date and have a little fear that somehow I will lose track of what day it is and then miss the train to Paris and fall into a domino effect of missed connections. It’s a silly fear I know.

We are really here, I wonder when I will start to believe it.